How to pour Guinness, eating in LA and that pesky Arizona law.

This is a follow up to the post I put up last time; written in 2010 so the dates and views are from then; I wonder, on this day September 28th 2024, if Los Angeles is the same paradise as Ieft.

Well the medics, Remote Area Medical, have left Los Angeles after treating over 6,000 patients and after a couple of other states they are heading for Haiti – and more power to their elbows.
One or two people have asked me how we manage to eat out so often – well let me tell you it is very cheap to live here and very cheap to eat out. Petrol is about £2 a gallon – in the UK the last time I was there it was that much per 2 litres.
Last night we went out to eat at a French Restaurant at the Farmer's Market and it cost, for two of us, about £25. We both had boef bourguignon and a posh bottle of water so it would have cost more if we'd ordered a bottle of wine, I suppose, but you can see how cheap it is.
On Sunday we had a curry and it cost around £23 but there I had a few pints of Guinness.
The Indian food is not great here but we have found a few places – the Guinness is not that good and it's better to have canned Guinness and pour it properly.
The Guinness I drank on Sunday was from the pub next door to the Curry Palace on Sunset Boulevard where they open the can and dump it into the glass upside down.

If anybody came here straight from Dublin they would kill the bartender for doing that.

It makes the Guinness look like slops and it doesn't settle at all properly.
Guinness won an award for the design of the can and the widget inside to make the Guinness taste and look as close to draft Guinness as possible. The draft Guinness in the pubs here leaves a lot to be desired and to be honest nobody here has ever tasted a real pint of Guinness. They may be used to what they drink, and if they ever visit Dublin or even London they might not like the real stuff – a bit like people who are only used to eating processed food not liking the real stuff.
It's the same with the cheese – it's all processed – and there is no real dairy industry as the milk and cream have to be processed more than I am used to.
The milk – when I was there – in the British Isles is pasteurised and here it is homogenised; in Britain it was possible to save the cream from the top of the milk over many days and churn it into butter; if you tried that with the milk here you would end up with cramp and no butter.
Anyway, apart from the dairy and the Guinness, the food here is great. They haven't quite cracked English food and their version of Irish food with actual lumps in the mashed potatoes would cause another potato famine if it was introduced in Ireland.
I haven't drunk wine for a few years, by the way, which was the best decision I ever made – just whiskey and beer and the beer is usually Guinness. So none of those red wine headaches any more and I also object to drinking beer straight from the bottle so if that's the only choice I don't drink.
The area we live in is very nice; we overlook Runyon Canyon and see plenty of palm trees, humming birds and a lot of greenery.

In this shot you can see the welcome you get when you get to the gate of the canyon which might frighten people who are scared of snakes away but I have been over the canyon hundreds of times and I've only seen two or three snakes. I've seen plenty of other things there though like a woodpecker. I have heard them all my life but here I actually saw one.
There are also loads of butterflies and a morning yoga class just as you walk through the gate.

The other photo is on the way down the canyon and you can just see the roof of our building – right at the part where the canyon disappears; the flat roof.
All the talk here at the moment is about the new immigration law in Arizona where cops will be able to stop people, who they suspect is an illegal immigrant (what they call illegals or illegal aliens) and ask for papers. The chances of them asking me is quite remote so they will have to racially profile people with brown skin – the Latino.
The Latino does a lot of the work here by the way, and the Latina; they sweep the streets, do the gardening and do a lot of the manual work the Americans won't do and if they don't do that you can see them selling oranges on street corners. Of course I have heard that the gangs rip them off for, what can only be called, protection money.
What you don't see the Latino doing is begging; there are lots of beggars here after spare change; they are not called beggars they are called pan handlers – is that the politically correct way I wonder?
Santa Monica, I would say, have the most beggars around here; nearly as many as San Francisco, and you see all races begging except for the Latino. Some people just come up to you in the street with their regular decent clothes on and ask for money. Sometimes it comes as a shock, if they're well dressed, and another place you find beggars is at the traffic lights.
At the Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard people are dressed as Jack Sparrow, Superman, Batman (he gets into fights) and other movie characters and they have photos taken with tourists who tip them – so they're begging too; in the richest country in the world.
The Los Angeles police are reluctant to get involved in immigration issues; they don't want undocumented immigrants being too scared to report crimes – I've always equated undocumented immigrants with sperms; the strongest come here and survive.
The Arizona law – which comes into force in a few months – signed April on 23rd by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, is similar to Reglamento de la Ley General de Poblacion — the General Law on Population enacted in Mexico in April 2000, which mandates that federal, local and municipal police cooperate with federal immigration authorities in that country in the arrests of illegal immigrants.
Under the Mexican law, illegal immigration is a felony, punishable by up to two years in prison. Immigrants who are deported and attempt to re-enter can be imprisoned for 10 years. Visa violators can be sentenced to six-year terms. Mexicans who help illegal immigrants are considered criminals.
This was pointed out to me by someone who supports the Arizona law but I don't agree with any of it; just because someone else does it doesn't mean we have to.
If the border between Mexico and the USA was open or easy to pass through like it is between the UK and the rest of Europe there wouldn't be an influx of Mexicans to the USA; they would come here to work in the richest country in the world and go home at night or weekends or whatever. People don't really want to leave their own country; they want to stay with their friends and extended families; sometimes they want to, like me, but that is another matter.
So what do people really have against immigrants – maybe the way they look?

Another week in America and Remote Area Medical.

I love living here; I really do. I love Los Angeles; it is a wild, happening crazy city and there is always something to do.

It's a great place to eat and if you mention that there is a new restaurant or coffee shop that's opened people are all ears; they gather around. This applies to all classes as here everybody eats out a lot – we eat out about three times a week.

3rd Street is full of restaurants and there was an article or series in the LA Weekly some time ago where the writer tried to eat his way through all of them; he ate through all kinds of ethnic food and all kinds of meat including goat – which I ate once and found delicious – so this post is not meant to be anti-American.

I received an e-mail the other day from a friend in England and he said how great it was that the Obama Health Care Plan had been passed by Congress.

Indeed it is wonderful that it is on the books but it wasn't the health care plan that Obama set out to achieve; there is no public option.

Most of us here don't know what has been passed and how it will affect us but what we do know is that on the day the bill passed the shares in health care insurance companies shot up – so they think it's a good deal for them.

Everybody will have to carry health insurance whether we can afford it or not.

Now let me tell you how many people in this country, the richest country in the world, are without health insurance – 40 million.

If these people are sick they have to buy Robitussin from the pharmacists and hope for the best; if they suddenly have appendicitis they find themselves $25,000 or so in debt which usually ends up in bankruptcy; in fact the majority of bankruptcies here are for medical reasons; they call them medical bankruptcies.

So whether the Obama Health Care Plan is going to have any legs is anybody's guess.

Last week the Remote Area Medical team came to the sports centre here in Los Angeles - you will see above at the top of the page ordinary middle class people waiting outside.


On the first day, Tuesday, they carried out procedures which included 95 tooth extractions, 22 oral surgeries, 470 fillings, prescriptions for 140 eyeglasses, 45 mammograms, 43, HIV tests and 96 Pap smears.

You have to ask yourself why the equivalent of Doctors Without Borders are in the second biggest city in the richest country in the world? And I think I have answered that earlier.

In Los Angeles 22% of adults are without medical insurance; that's why they are here.

I have to conclude that it may be too late here for a national health service or any kind of universal health care – or what they call here socialized medicine; I hope I'm wrong.

Remote Area Medical – or RAM – was started by Stan Brock; I looked him up on Wikipedia and he was was born in 1936 in Preston, Lancashire, England.

He was educated at Canford School, Wimborne, Dorset. His father, a civil servant, was posted to the British Colony of Guyana.

He was known on TV for a show called Wild Kingdom and seems to have had, so far, an amazing life – wrestling with anacondas in the Amazon Basin for example.

When RAM were here last time there was a problem as they couldn't bring doctors into the state unless they had a Californian licence to practice; so the doctors without borders status had to be kicked into touch.

So each time they visit a state they have to advertise for volunteers; I think we might volunteer next time; not because of our medical expertise – even though Margaret is a qualified nurse (in the UK) – but to help organizing the queues etc.

They need to people to stand in line for somebody who has to relieve themselves or go to another queue and, you know - it'll be an experience.

At the sports centre they have notices saying 'line for fillings,' line for extractions,' 'line for spectacles' and all the other ailments.

There have been interviews on the radio with some of the doctors – on kpcc.org if you fancy listening – and one of the doctors said that it is just like being in the third world; the poor of the third world are the same as our poor.

Stan Brock shows up to each venue and uses a loud hailer to organise things; he said he sees many things but gets the greatest satisfaction when he sees people newly fitted with glasses; it's as if they've been given sight from being blind, I suppose, and I can easily understand it.

There are very sad cases; a doctor said there was a patient who had diabetes and hadn't taken her meds for six years; the doctor said she was dreading the results of the examinations as the organs will be in failure.

The RAM will be travelling on next week to Tennessee, Kentucky, Maryland and other states and each time they will be looking for volunteers.

Here's a letter from Stan Brock - http://www.ramusa.org/about/letter.htm - if you want to write a screenplay what better subject could you want?

The Comedians

Jack Benny

Dave Allen

Johnny Vegas

Norman Evans

Well thanks very much for the support – I had a lot of private e-mails about the show and about the progress of my voice and in the finishing up we had a good weekend.

I am writing this at three thirty in the morning as we are rushed off our feet with packing and arranging things for the big move back to the UK; it's going to be an adventure for us as we are taking the train from Los Angeles to New York which takes three days, before taking the ship.

We have a stop over in Chicago for six hours so we must take advantage of that; I don't think I'll have time to take in some blues but if there is a chance I'll try.

I also want to try and get on a tourist bus for a guided tour of the city. I am much more interested in seeing where Al Capone lived or where the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre occurred than trying to blend in with the locals. Tourists look like tourists; it's the way they carry their cameras and the way they try and blend in and in any case there's nothing wrong with being a tourist.

Back to the weekend: I really enjoyed the show and learned a lot. I didn't break any box office records but I had decent houses and a lot of my friends came and it was great seeing them after the show.

Nothing is written in stone but I think the script is the way I like it.

For those who don't know what it's about – and why should you? - it's about a comedian who has an 'out of body' experience and sees himself doing his act; he eventually realises what he is which is just like the other 'old school' comedians of his generation with their old ways trying to be hip.

The old comedians would never touch the microphone like the newer ones do today; the new ones walk around the stage with the microphone in their hand which is something you would never see Jack Benny do as he knew what to do with his hands.

There is a famous play called The Comedians by Trevor Griffiths which is set in a comedy school. It was a hit in the West End and on Broadway in the seventies. It deals with the young comedian who doesn't know what to do with his hands taking the microphone off the stand and holding it; some of the play is very funny and sad and has scenes of the 'students' taking the mic off the stand and leaning against it.

Isn't it strange that it's pronounced as mike and spelt mic?

My comedian, Eddie Ramone, also uses the Eff word for the first time on stage as he is trying to be 'dangerous' as he puts it; I got this idea from seeing a very famous comedian at a roast using it like the other younger comics do and it didn't seem to fit; he looked embarrassed.

The top picture is of Jack Benny whom I mentioned earlier on; he was a sophisticated American comedian known for his impeccable timing and poise.

Then we have Dave Allen; an Irish comedian well known in the 60s and 70s who would sit sipping a drink that only looked like whiskey (his drink was champagne) and he was the epitome of relaxation.

Next one down is a modern comedian Johnny Vegas, who also gets a lot of work as an actor, who is a typical northern comedian rather like Norman Evans who is in the bottom photo, who specialised in being Norma Evans too.

All funny and I certainly do not compare myself with any of them; the hardest part of my play is standing up and doing the 'stand up' comedy bits.

This is totally different from being funny in a play or a movie – I always knew it was it has just been confirmed to me that's all.

Oh why not – here is a picture of me as Eddie Ramone.

Eddie Ramone

Bill Sparkman of Clay County, Kentucky.

  

Me and my pal Nick, in the street, recently,  

with Shaftesbury Avenue in the background.

I wrote this in 2009 when I lived in Los Angeles and today I found it, read it and that's why it's here. The photo - a couple of months ago after a roam around Soho.

I heard an article on NPR this morning (in 2009) about the death of a fella called Bill Sparkman in Clay County, Kentucky.
Bill Sparkman was a Census Bureau worker for Clay County and he was found on September 12th hanging from a tree with the word 'FED' scrawled on his chest; now when they say scrawled I don't really know what they mean unless it was on his actual bare chest which makes the whole thing even more macabre.
The people in Clay County overwhelmingly voted for John McCain in the election last year (2008) and have been protesting against President Obama ever since; they see him as a big spending socialist. 

To me, and to anybody from Europe that sounds comedic; we have lived under so called socialists, they have always been in our governments, and Mister Obama is nowhere near being a socialist; if he lived in Britain he would be on the right wing of the Labour Party.

But to get back to Bill Sparkman; he was, apparently, a man who had gone back to school to qualify as a school teacher and, indeed, worked as a substitute teacher; the census only happens every so often – five years is it or ten? - and he had started his census work recently; he had also been diagnosed with a form of cancer – non Hodgkin's lymphoma.

The FBI have said that his death is either a homicide, a suicide or an accident. Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous in all your life; how could a man accidentally scrawl something onto his chest and then hang himself – some accident!

Here is direct quite from Yahoo News: 'Al Cross, a former reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal who covered the area for 30 years, believes that the conditions underlying the murder go back much farther and much deeper - and are more local - than the spate of recent ire.'

Today I'm going to write about illegal alcohol in Donegal, Ireland; not that I know too much about it but I know what I want my characters to do in the next part of my novel. One of my heroins gets involved in the distribution of poteen and I want a little adventure to happen now so I'll get on with that.

Toodle oo!!

 

The Carrington Event.

 

I wrote about this before and here's a reminder.

I hope you are getting satisfaction from the Internet and find it useful; I do and I freely admit it. I do my banking, pay bills, buy from Amazon and, in fact, buy from anywhere using Paypal: I even bought a pair of shoes on line and had to pick them up from the store. 

Much better than buying things personally as I just hate shopping.

A friend of mine, Ron, would go on line but didn't trust it; he would amuse himself by looking at the Red Sox statistics, fixtures and historical results; would search on line for nothing in particular but he would never use it for anything like banking, buying something or anything which would involve buying anything or using his credit card.

I remember buying things for him on my computer – but his credit card – as if it were somehow safer.

His point was that he wouldn't put things on to the computer in case the whole system broke down and everything would be lost. It never did in his life time. 

But it did once upon a time.

It happened in 1859; in those days (doze daze) electricity was hardly used as it hadn't been harnessed so it wasn't noticed by a lot of people. It was noticed, however, by a man called Carrington and how do I remember this? Because there was a teacher in our school called Mr Carrington. In those days (doze daze) teachers' first names were Top Secret! We would look at the initial and try to guess it.

Back to Carrington the solar storm spotter of 1859: the storm he noticed came during solar cycle 10 and if it happened today it would cut all Internet activity, electrical usage – you name it – and prove Ron right.

The most recent solar storm of similar magnitude was in 2012 – but this didn't strike the earth.

By the way the Carrington I am referring to was Richard C. Carrington (I just looked it up on Wikipidia) and the storm was also noticed by someone called Richard Hodgson independently.

Here's what it says on Wikipedia:

From August 28 to September 2, 1859, numerous sunspots were observed on the Sun. On August 29, southern aurorae were observed as far north as Queensland, Australia. Just before noon on September 1, the English amateur astronomers Richard Carrington and Richard Hodgson independently made the first observations of a solar flare. The flare was associated with a major coronal mass ejection (CME) that travelled directly toward Earth, taking 17.6 hours to make the 150 million kilometre (93 million mile) journey. It is believed that the relatively high speed of this CME (typical CMEs take several days to arrive at Earth) was made possible by a prior CME, perhaps the cause of the large aurora event on August 29, that "cleared the way" of ambient solar wind plasma for the Carrington event.

Here is a link if you want to read the lot:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859

and be careful where you leave your stuff; don't trust that cloud!

London

Of course the first thing you notice is the extreme drop in temperature; it could be a lot worse; I mean it's not like going to Canada or the North Pole. At the moment it's about forty five degrees - in this room!!!! I jest - it just feels like that but it was forty five when we landed.

They are used to the cold here so they have their thermostats turned down to 17 degrees Celsius and I keep putting it up to 22; now what that is in English (even though this is England!!) I don't know. I've just found a converter on line - 17 = 62.6, F and 22 = 71.6.

But it is The Fall - autumn when the leaves fall from the trees and together with that and a damp atmosphere it's rather squishy underfoot as you walk along the pavements here - which are those things the Americans call sidewalks.

I can't say it's the most pleasant sensation walking in such an atmosphere - I'd much prefer the sunshine and dryness of LA.

We arrived at 7.30 am local time today and took the express train from Heathrow to Ealing; that's about 15 - 20 minutes. It's a bit silly getting a ride as the train is so much faster.

London is now full of Polish immigrants; they work in the pubs as bar men and bar maids, in coffee shops and cafes and in construction.

Sixty years ago it was the Irish doing the same thing; building Britain after the devastation of the war had flattened lots of the conurbations and factories. As then, it is mainly the young who are new to working here and, as before with the Irish, a lot of them will stay as permanent residents and become invisible immigrants as they are the same colour as the English. Not so with the Jamaicans and other West Indian immigrants of sixty years ago; they have settled in ok but have attracted attention to themselves merely because of their colour and they are, sometimes, the targets of bigots and racist groups; these tend to organise themselves and a right wing political group called the British National Party has had their leader, Nick Griffin, voted in as a member of the European Parliament for North West England in the 2009 European Elections. There was some controversy here when the BBC allowed him to appear on one of their editions of Question Time.

So there is an undercurrent of racial tension. In the 1950s when the immigrants came they were, as I said earlier, predominantly young - also single which meant that the Irish had a reputation for partying - and why shouldn't a good looking group of people party? The same accusations are now aimed at the Poles.

There is a shop around the corner which is owned and run by Asians; I don't mean Asian as the Americans describe people from Japan and China but Pakistanis and Indians and people from various African countries of Indian extraction. What I have noticed is that some young Poles, some very big Poles - and a lot of them are big - tend to hang around that shop with the little Pakistanis and I have also noticed that there is very rarely any trouble in that shop from racist thugs with the big boys hanging around. Is that good or bad? Is vigilantism on the rise or will it eventually be the same as America with security guards in every store?

As I write this there have been two bangs; not gunfire but fireworks. There was also a bottle rocket that went off when I first started to type and then two very loud bangs just now.

It was November 5th yesterday; Bonfire Night which I wrote about the other day. I suppose they had bonfires and fireworks last night and, because it's Saturday tomorrow, there will be a lot more tomorrow night. The wrong time for me to come as I hate fireworks!!

Sleep - the cure all and Brafield-on-the-green.

Some time ago, when the children were growing up, we lived, what seemed, miles away from anywhere. We lived in a little village in Northamptonshire (above) called Brafield-on-the-green; I think it was around four miles south east of Northampton and about sixteen miles north west of Bedford.

I caught trains to London from both railway stations and then it was about one hour into London via Bedford and a bit longer from Northampton; the journey might seem ideal on paper but in real life it was a pain in the arse – especially when the journey was just for a five minute audition.

But life in Brafield was very peaceful and the children were brought up in, what their memories seem, idyllic conditions. They had to travel the four miles into Northampton when they left their village school in Brafield for the big wide world on the big bad bus as we couldn't always take them there and bring them back home in the car.

The kids in the village were children of farm workers and were raised up as country lads and lasses with a knowledge of the countryside and were not necessarily 'street wise.' It was strange for me to go from my life in a village, where I would brew beer and wine and even baked my own bread, to the metropolis of London with my work in films and TV and my time away in the theatre in other cities of the UK.

Once in a while youths of the village would knock our door carrying a few dead rabbits they had shot and offering them to us very cheaply. We never bought any preferring to buy our rabbits from the market in Northampton which had been skinned and dressed and ready for our stew. I can't believe how expensive rabbit is now from the butchers here in Los Angeles compared to what it was back then in Northampton.

The house we lived in had three bedrooms but was rambling with lots of nooks and crannies, a big walk in pantry and a Rayburn cooker/oven, with a kettle of water always on the go and which kept the house really warm during the cold winters. I remember one really cold snap when we were, more or less, trapped in our houses for a day sitting by that Rayburn, reading The Guardian whilst the kids played in other parts of the house or into the one hundred foot garden to make a snowman.

We had an abundance of cats which came and went frequently particularly when they were killed on the main road that split the village between the middle and working classes. That part of the village has slowly become middle class now, I hear, so I can imagine what it's like with the use of coasters, doilies and fish knives catching on.

One cat we had was a beautiful big white one called Flossie. She was a clever cat and would manipulate the door handle and let herself into the living room from the kitchen. Then she would settle herself on top of my stereo unit, or even one of our laps, and sleep.

We didn't have a cat-flap so the cats would jump onto the living room window and meow then we would let them in.

One night Flossie jumped up on the window ledge and she looked in distress. When I let her in I could see she had been shot. Obviously some kid was taking time off from hanging around by the telephone box (which is what the kids of the village did in those days) and shot her; the pellet had lodged around by her hip. She ran passed me and jumped onto the top of my stereo unit and cleaned the wound; then she went to sleep.

She seemed quite comfortable so we left her and she slept till the following afternoon; when she woke up she seemed fine so we left her and didn't bother to take her to the vet. The pellet stayed in her hip for the rest of her life which ended some time later when she was killed on the main A428; she was the last one of our cats to die that way run over by some vehicle or other.

What cured Flossie that day was sleep; sleep has been the greatest cure since records began and an estimated 30 to 40 percent of the U.S. population suffers from insomnia and is considered second only to cigarette smoking as dangerous for your health. It has been linked to a variety of health problems, such as diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and chronic pain.

When my wife had pneumonia recently she slept for days; the body knows what it needs and it induces sleep to cure – why then can't anybody sleep when they are in hospital?

I know – I have a strange way of making a point!!

A friend of mine left hospital last week and was glad to get home to get some peace. The nurses, doctors, ancillary workers, orderlies, auxiliaries and even the security people talk and move about as if it's the middle of the day. Patients have the TV on full blast, call out loud for the nurses and the para medics even take patients home on the middle of the night.

My friend was dropped home in an ambulance at 10:45 pm last week. When she queried this with the para medics, they told her it was nothing; they took people home all through the night.

What kind of sense if it when the greatest cure for nearly everything is sleep that the people running hospitals keep you awake.

I rest my case.

Laurence Olivier.

 

                              Laurence Olivier.  

I read a biography of Laurence Olivier at one time, and the writer opined that he was the greatest actor in the world for one reason, and one reason alone; because he wanted to be.

Now there is something to that.

Not too long ago I wrote a post about Mark Rylance whom it was considered was the current (then) best actor in the world; same reason! He wanted to be - or people wanted him to be - or whatever floated their boat or, to be more precise, filled their theatres.

There was something else I read about Olivier and it opened (not opined this time) by saying 'he was no intellectual' – I mean how could he be, he left school at 15? Okay he went to drama school but so did I; and left school at 15.

Even though Olivier may have been considered to be the best actor in the world, at one time, according to the great man himself, he had to do about 30 or 40 takes in a film, with William Wyler, and when he got frustrated, he said to Wyler “Willie; I did it this way, I've done it that way. I've done it faster and slower - what do you want me to do?”

And Wyler said “I want you to do it better!”

Best actor in the world?

The thing is – and it might have been whilst getting the above direction – he stamped his character on Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights – Samuel Goldwyn called it Withering Heights, according to Olivier.

In fact the anecdotes above are from Olivier himself.

The thing about Heathcliff is that he was from the back streets of Liverpool – a bit of rough – and he fell for the lady of the house, the posh girl and Olivier played him with a posh English accent. Today he would be played by someone from Liverpool.

There are people – actors – here who still worship him; of course there are others who don't like him at all, but he had the two or three things it calls for to be a star – he was ambitious, talented and not very clever.

I think the latter is very important because, according to the great playwright Brien Friel, to be a star to have to have huge huge ambition, a talent that is sensational and unique (there's only one Sir Laurence) and no brain.

And when you think about it, it has a lot of truth.

I know – and I am bound to know – a lot of actors. A lot of them are friends but none of my friends are huge stars – I have a very famous cousin, whom I have never met and when I think about him he may be as thick as two short planks too, for all I know; I don't know, which is why I won't name him, but Friel's view is that brains get in the way. 

Maybe they do and maybe they don't!

If you wanted to be a movie star, you are good looking and you think you have what it takes, what kind of a reaction would you get if you took the idea to the bank?

What kind of business plan would you present to them and if they fell for it, what advice would these very clever people give you?

Imagine, for one wonderful moment, going on to the TV show Dragon's Den.

The people on Dragon's Den (they changed the title in America to Shark's Tank.) – the so called Dragons – are the most ambitious kind of people there are, but would you really want to have a drink with them?

They'd be talking about the business plan, the yield, the profit, the bottom line – I have been in the company of such people and I have seen the attitude and the way their face changes if you give them a good idea.

I was on a train once and standing next to me was a businessman with the suit, the brief case, the Financial Times, the whole nine yards, and he complained about the train.

It was British Rail then and he said they had no idea (BR that was – look at it now) how to run it. 

And I said “why don't they put advertisements at the back of the seats” and a bulb went off in his head; I could see it.

“Advertise!” he said.

His name?

I have no idea who he was! But that bulb!!

As I was saying I know loads of actors and I have known briefly well known ones on the way up: pains in the arse, stars up there: pains in the arse and stars who were stars here and when I met them in Hollywood they were nice people again; they were lost, they didn't know where to go, where to network (arse hole creep) but when I pointed them in the right direction they became pains in the arse again.

Not being able to look you in the eye in case an important casting director or director came into the room, so they could talk to them and you know it's a sight to see.

What happens is, they sidle up to their prey with a big smile on their face and start a little chat; after about three minutes or so another person will come up and take the head honcho away - I'm sure they are hired to do this – leaving the networker marooned in the middle of the floor.

But you will see others, other networkers, dappled throughout the room, waiting to pounce like hyenas on the savanna – in fact looking like hyenas with their teeth, ready to smile, and their eyes widening and scrunching so as to show them off at their best, waiting for their victim to be alone.

I think the reason I don't know the big big stars intimately is that they don't seem to have many friends; on the way up they twitch and walk around, can't sit down for long, they worry that they'll miss a phone call or a casting and they are no company at all and in any case, as in Hollywood, they drop you and forget you as soon as you've shown them the way.

They pretend to forget you as they know that you know what kind of a prat they really are.

I met quite a few stars in Hollywood and some of them were nice – George Clooney is charming and quite well informed – so it doesn't happen to everybody.